Snooping Picasa

Listen to the podcast Question: I really like using Picasa to organize my pictures, but I don't like how it looks everywhere in my hard drive to put images in the library. Is there a way to tell it to mind its own business? The IT Guy says: Picasa (the free image organizer from Google) is a very popular

Question: I really like using Picasa to organize my pictures, but I don't like how it looks everywhere in my hard drive to put images in the library. Is there a way to tell it to mind its own business?

The IT Guy says: Picasa (the free image organizer from Google) is a very popular program for Windows computers, and I've mentioned it before. One aspect of it that can be annoying, however, is that in its default setting it can be very expansive in where it looks to add images to the organizer. If you do work like I do, I have screen captures and other stray graphics that I don't need to have in the organizer, yet Picasa diligently finds them and shoves them in with the other pictures.

To take control of this, go to Tools and select Folder Manager. This will give you a list of all the folders and directories on your computer. If you see an eyeball next to a folder, that means Picasa constantly watches that folder, and any picture or graphic that goes in there will appear in the Picasa library. You have the option of setting folders so that they are removed from Picasa (never scanned) or just scanned once, but no new images in that directory will be found. If you choose for Picasa just to watch "My Pictures", for instance, then only those pictures will get pulled into your library. For you control freaks out there (you know who you are!), it will let you keep your pictures organized the way you want them!

Question: Is there anything better than free software? Answer: Yes! That would be software that is not only free but is (a) incredibly powerful; (b) incredibly versatile; and (c) incredibly easy to use. Does such a mind-blowing combination exist? Definitely! It’s a marvelous piece of digital photo editing

Listen to the podcast Question: I use Picasa as my main digital photograph organizer, but whenever I hook up my camera, the Adobe organizer tries to take over. How can I make it stop? The IT Guy says: If you have Photoshop Elements 4 or 5 installed on your Windows computer, it also installs a photo

I’ve been trying to make room on my Windows XP computer’s hard drive. I’ve deleted applications, thrown out old files by the bunch, and yet I still don’t seem to be freeing up as much space as I would expect.I

Question: I correctly formatted a new 80 gig HD, but my computer (win98se) tells me I only have 40gigs of space! What happened to the rest of the hard drive? The IT Guy says: Several possibilities come to mind. The first thing to do is to see if â€œoverlay softwareâ€ came with your new hard drive. The BIOS

Question: My computer will not let me format a new 40-gigabyte Western Digital hard drive. What should I do? The IT Guy says: First, a Word of Caution: Be very careful when initializing / formatting hard drives since any existing data on the hard drive will be erased during this process. Because your hard drive

Listen to the podcast Question: When I put pictures or clip art into my Word document, I canâ€™t easily drag them to where I want them to go. Can I change this? The IT Guy says: When you first import an image into Word, the program treats it like a large block of text. If you move it around, it will

Listen to the podcast Question: My computer has died, and it looks like I may have to replace my hard drive. How do I get the data from the old computer to the new one? The IT Guy says: If you end up replacing the hard drive on your computer, and assuming that the old hard drive hasn't been damaged, you

Question: I have a Macintosh G4 computer, and recently reinitialized my hard drive to reinstall my operating system, applications and documents again. Before re-initialization my hard drive size was 50 GB, now it says 35 GB. Is my hard drive toast? The IT Guy says: I am not sure, but I would recommend that you